Ep49 - Rethink: Overcoming Innovation Anxiety in Financial Services

In this hosts-only episode, H. Adam Holt and Derek Notman unpack why large, established financial services companies are so often slow to innovate compared to newer, direct-to-consumer competitors. Drawing on their own experience on both sides, as advisors inside big institutions and as founders building new technology, they explore the compliance, bureaucracy, and organizational fear that can stall change. The episode offers perspective for advisors frustrated with clunky technology, fintechs selling into the enterprise, and enterprise leaders looking to move faster.

• Why large financial institutions are slower to innovate than direct-to-consumer competitors
• The role of compliance and bureaucracy in stalling new technology
• How fear of costly mistakes shapes enterprise decision-making
• Advice for fintech companies selling into large enterprises
• What advisors can do when stuck with outdated internal tech
• Lessons from building new technology inside and outside large institutions

Full timestamped transcript.

[00:00:29] H. Adam Holt: Derek, why is the financial services industry always slow to innovate?

[00:00:36] Derek N. H. Notman: Adam man, that is , a question that brings up a lot of good and bad memories.

[00:00:42] H. Adam Holt: You mean it. They're in the past. It doesn't happen. We're now good innovators.

[00:00:46] Derek N. H. Notman: Uh, no. I think there's still some struggles. , It's been an interesting journey, and I'm sure you have some similarities being an advisor at a large, , old company and then leaving and being a tech founder, , what's the word I'm looking for? They're direct opposites and I think one of the challenges of why it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks, Is that we have , this environment where status quo is working

[00:01:20] H. Adam Holt: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:21] Derek N. H. Notman: and these big old ships don't turn on a dime, and we're talking about thousands if not tens of thousands of employees and millions of customers, and you make one decision that can have a ripple effect for sure.

So , I can understand that there are some reasons why it's slow to innovate, but at the same time , it's really important that we do, , because the future is moving faster and faster and faster, and we have to be able to adopt and adapt and innovate along those lines. I mean, I could go on and on and on, but if for whatever reason we seem to be a lot slower than other industries too, which is, man, has that been a frustration on a number of levels?

I dunno. What do you think? I could go on and on, man. This is

[00:02:09] H. Adam Holt: you're gonna have to go on and on cuz this podcast is gonna be at least 30 minutes about this topic and. Where this came from. If you remember in our last podcast, Bob from Idaho had asked about this. He was sharing his frustration around the speed of innovation in large firms where most of us have started and still a great number of the financial advisors , in our planet, let alone our country.

A really part of larger organizations. And that tends to mean that innovation when it's slow in these larger companies. Has a trickle effect down to the consumer. So those individuals working with financial advisors tend to have a much slower innovation experience than those that actually go direct to the consumer tech environment.

We'll even call them robo-advice that's popping up like mad because the newest technology companies going direct to consumer are actually innovating much faster cuz they don't have this old super structure that. Tanker that you're talking about, or Ocean liner, they don't have that baggage.

[00:03:15] Derek N. H. Notman: Exactly.

[00:03:16] H. Adam Holt: so as a result, because the large companies are slow to innovate, it creates this lag effect for all financial advisors to be bringing up the rear.

On innovation and that parlays into speed of execution at the custodial level. It shows up in the time it takes to close life insurance business or insurances. It shows up in, , client portals that look woefully pathetic relative to the newest robo stuff coming out. And somehow the industry doesn't get the message that it's gotta be more urgent.

Why is that?

[00:03:53] Derek N. H. Notman: I think there's a lot of fear. I think there's bureaucracy involved. I mean, we've experienced this. Mark Faff alluded to it in his previous episode with it, you know, his view from, from the inside. At home office and it's are the right people actually being charged and tasked with the innovation that needs to happen?

Because we know some of these large institutions do have some people that are real go-getters or forward thinking. They have been empowered by the highest levels of management to say, listen, here, go do it. Get to work. You don't have to get permission to do almost anything. This is your mo. Go get it done.

Um, so I think you have a lot of these different issues, but there's also, there's compliance to think about how do you deploy a new solution to 10,000 advisors at once.

[00:04:40] H. Adam Holt: Yeah. Training.

[00:04:41] Derek N. H. Notman: That's got its own challenges. Right. And, so if I'm listening to this episode today, I, I think there's almost like three people I hope we're talking to is one is an, as an advisor in the field wanting better tech.

You know, I see my friends over on the independent side talking about, oh, I got this cool new tech, or I'm doing that and I'm frustrated because I'm still doing paper applications or whatever. So we can give them some insight, we can give some fintechs looking to work with enterprises, some insight, and hopefully we can nudge some of the folks at the enterprise level to say, Hey, maybe there's a faster, better way we can innovate internally to work without, you know, you know, exterior partners.

[00:05:21] H. Adam Holt: Yeah,

[00:05:21] Derek N. H. Notman: That's what I would say. I think those would be the three.

[00:05:23] H. Adam Holt: those are great. All right. So that's great. So let's touch on those today. And I, you know, I thought of something while you were responding that might shed some light and, and this is not to excuse our slowness, but you're right. Compliance size of ship. Fear of, of, let's say, I don't wanna make the wrong decision, especially , when you're running a larger company or you're in a decision, uh, position, you're, you're making million dollar decisions every day.

And, and sometimes that's, that's not your money, right? It's shareholder money. You have high cost of being wrong. , there's been a, a tendency as we have seen both working for enterprises as well as selling to enterprises as a vendor. That the greater super structure that has to be created in order to execute the daily operations of a large company with a lot to lose, right?

Both in the media, if they put out the wrong thing, it's not just jobs, it's shareholder value. If they have a real faux pa in the field and something breaks, Uh, that's not, that's gonna cost them millions of dollars, so, I think you're right. Fear, or we'll call it lack of courage, is somewhat institutionalized because they've had to build all of these routes to execute a 10,000 employee, thing, right?

Safety measures, protocols, inspection. And that generally is just gonna slow the whole thing down. So when a new tech comes out, it just, it bounces off the hull in a way, right? It's

[00:06:49] Derek N. H. Notman: a good, that's a

[00:06:49] H. Adam Holt: Boom as a protective mechanism because the infrastructure is supporting so much dependency, the employees, depending upon this company being here tomorrow.

And so I think you're right, fear, and we'll call it lack of courage, is institutionalized.

[00:07:05] Derek N. H. Notman: that's a great little mic drop moment even. Uh, I would totally agree with you.

[00:07:12] H. Adam Holt: That's a, that's how we forgive the enterprises. That they're kind of, it's, it's the way we're built. Right? Don't judge me because

[00:07:19] Derek N. H. Notman: way they're built. It is.

[00:07:21] H. Adam Holt: is how I was born. You know?

[00:07:22] Derek N. H. Notman: Yeah. Like, well, you know, but we, we can, as we even joke about in the title, we can teach old dogs new tricks. Uh, it, it does work, but I think we have to have a better understanding, uh, in context. Do we wanna share any stories?

[00:07:41] H. Adam Holt: Sure. Yeah, we can share

[00:07:43] Derek N. H. Notman: fun.

[00:07:44] H. Adam Holt: stories. Well, I, you know, even my own journey for asset map was an interesting one. I learned for those, thinking about how do you get change in an, in an institution. There, there's no question that we. We had to get advocates within the larger organization, the first, our first large enterprise, we needed to build advocacy.

I thought about this before. There's really five influences you really need to have in a large enterprise in order to make change or to get them to want to change, right? Have you ever heard that joke? How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? It doesn't matter.

The light bulb has to want to change, right? So in this case, How many enterprise executives does it take to, to innovate? The, the executives have to want to innovate. Okay. And so the only thing that we found is really gonna motivate them is one of these five things, or combination one. Either there's some kind of disruptive event or competitor or innovation that's, that's getting them worried about losing their job or their edge, right?

There's something, there's a, again, another fear word, a reactionary thing that's changing, right? With this chat G P T thing. Everybody's scrambling to figuring out, right? You gotta know there's, there are literally jobs that were just created or people re repositioned on their role to figure out what this is gonna mean.

[00:09:05] Derek N. H. Notman: no

[00:09:05] H. Adam Holt: Okay. That's disruption number. Number two, there's enormous influence in the industry consultants out there. You, you know them all by name, right? The, the big four and their satellites, they hold extraordinary amount of influence because those are ways you protect against losing your job,

[00:09:26] Derek N. H. Notman: Oh yeah. It's a, it is totally a risk measure. Be like, well, we're gonna hire this outside consultant who is an expert. And these experts, they're experts for a reason. But it's also part of the slow moving cogwheel now, right? Cuz you have to bring them in. That takes time. There's an R F P just to get the the consultant in and that can take six to 12 months and then you have to go through their whole pro.

Yeah. I mean, I mean it's good but it's bad. There's two sides to

[00:09:50] H. Adam Holt: They have to budget a million dollars every time they talk to them because these guys ain't cheap. And you know, you're buying insurance policies against making a bad decision or at least a defensible decision. We joked about this in a podcast once, how, uh, you know, when it comes down to it, these RFPs go out for CRMs, Salesforce makes it.

And then all these other CRMs that are probably more suited, I would say arguably. And guess what they choose? They choose Salesforce cuz , no one ever has to apologize for choosing Salesforce. Right.

[00:10:17] Derek N. H. Notman: until they do, but until they do.

[00:10:19] H. Adam Holt: Well, that's, that's the point. And, if it doesn't execute, it's not their fault.

Right. It's. It was someone down line. Right? There was some reason that they didn't execute it because we made a good decision. . But I, you can't actually ignore how important these guys are because unfortunately many of them also have an incentive to actually promote certain products. So, so be aware of the fact, and you should know, I'm, this is something I became aware of.

, large consulting companies, cut side deals with , the vendors that they vet. To actually promote them. And I'm saying that literally publicly, I have learned about that inside we have been offered the same. , if you wanna know, like good old boy network, why things happen, it's because the money talks and basically incumbents, , are really driving the game because , they have that much more influence.

And, and I, I know that sounds messed up, but it is so true

[00:11:13] Derek N. H. Notman: the way it works, man. I mean, money is the thing that, that skids it All right?

[00:11:17] H. Adam Holt: It's a pay-to-play system. So if you can get the consulting organizations behind it, that's a big thing. The other three things are pretty obvious and obviously when there's new leadership comes in, that that's a change.

And they tend to just overhaul everybody, whether it's good or bad. They, they tend to do this. Those are great change moments. , and they're, they also are almost enabled or expected to make major changes cuz why are they being brought in, if not to make changes. The fourth one is the field force is really demanding it.

So you've got a bunch of advisors and that was our tact.

[00:11:45] Derek N. H. Notman: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:45] H. Adam Holt: We just get the field force to bang on the drum. Say we want more pudding. How can you have any meat? You haven't had your pudding. We're like, we want our pudding. . And uh, and that's of course that that requires community and grassroots. And then the last one is to find an influential group that's demanding it like management or compliance.

They're the ones that are championing this cause. So anyway, those are the, everybody should pay attention to those five. There's probably more. Do you have any thoughts

[00:12:07] Derek N. H. Notman: I would add one, maybe lump it into your last one. The influential is what happens if the S E C finra, comes up with new policy that. , or regulation that has to be met. , I've seen that drive innovation because, but again, it's knee-jerk again, because our industry and profession's so slow,

[00:12:27] H. Adam Holt: Yeah.

[00:12:28] Derek N. H. Notman: can kind of see where the puck's headed most of the time.

So it's, a shame that , it's a bit more knee-jerk than it needs to be. It should be more, , proactive instead of reactive. I think you're spot on and the field force demanding it, , that's near and dear to my heart. That's how I. Had tried to do my stuff with Connector as well. That's where it started.

Cuz I was part of the field force,

[00:12:46] H. Adam Holt: well, that's a good segue to why, tell us about that, because I, I don't know that many people know the story that you had. Of really making change cuz we obviously know you had some challenges and you had some successes even outside your org. Where, where did that kind of play out?

[00:12:59] Derek N. H. Notman: yeah, connector's, the byproduct of just me becoming a digital virtual advisor. Right. And just like you and, and, uh, All of a sudden I noticed how much success I was having, but more importantly, other advisors did and started asking more and more about it. And I'm like, huh, maybe there's something here. I should go sell that to New York Life.

I should go empower all of their advisors because this thing's really cool. And I've got a group of advisors in my office that are already doing this stuff. I'm teaching, like I have a picture of our first little pilot group together. It was like eight of us or something. It's just a small , little thing.

And uh, I was so naive. unknowing about what I was about to get into. Oh my gosh.

[00:13:41] H. Adam Holt: it made perfect sense. Why? How they not actually just eat this up.

[00:13:45] Derek N. H. Notman: made total perfect sense. And , even Mark Faff alluded to it, mark Faff , was, , a big supporter and, , very helpful as far as just a friend , and some guidance there. But going into the world , of slow innovation.

Maybe we can call it in the enterprise world was a major eyeopener with connector and was very, very hard. We're talking months, if not years, to get to the right people to pitch it, to get them to understand it, to go all through the things that we already talked about, to overcome the fear and the bureaucracy and how this is better than what you're currently doing and how, hey, the field force is asking for this thing.

It was faster. I gotta deal with a company in South Africa for connector. And another institution in Canada much faster than I did here in the States. Go figure.

[00:14:33] H. Adam Holt: That's interesting. You know, it's funny, I, that that really resonates too because even in my own story with Asset Map, I remember in 2008, I played golf. I was at one of the top producer events, top advisor, . And I had tripled my business three years in a row.

Everyone was like, what is this young kid doing at the top producer event? I got to golf with the head of the company and I told him on the 18th, green, I have figured it out. I know how to change this entire organization and revolutionize it. And he's like, that's, that's great. Set up a meeting with my assistant.

We'll talk about it. It was a gratitude meeting. Like, Hey, good to see you. Okay, listen, I gotta go to the next meeting now. It took me another six years.

[00:15:13] Derek N. H. Notman: Oh.

[00:15:13] H. Adam Holt: to get them to execute it. It took six years. And I realize now this was actually, , don't get me wrong. At the time I was quite frustrated. Okay.

[00:15:20] Derek N. H. Notman: you were probably ready, like, Hey, I'm ready to go. I got the solution. I'm the proof it works. I got the meeting. Okay. Where we sign?

[00:15:26] H. Adam Holt: just like you said, right? It made perfect sense. , this is gonna change. You saw the vision, it's gonna change the planet, right? So it, but the challenge is it's gonna happen all of a sudden after a sh. Long period of time.

[00:15:39] Derek N. H. Notman: I know. I know what you are gonna say.

[00:15:41] H. Adam Holt: I almost said it because that's what it felt like. It felt like we were , dragging the ocean liner and like as like a tugboat.

It's like it doesn't want to go, but we're like, , don't you see the iceberg in front of you? Did anybody not see it? Like, why are they still going straight? I'm trying to pull you, but the reality is you, we have to recognize we don't have the credibility. And I have now learned as a c E O of a company that's now grown beyond me, that you don't have the ability.

Nor does it make sense by the way, to always get distracted by everyone who comes to you and says, I have the next solution. You have to filter . You get to this place where , your time and your priority is so now focused cuz you're making million dollar decisions or whatever scale decisions you're making.

Just like you as advisor, eventually get to a place where I actually can't meet with every one of my clients. I need to bring in a

[00:16:29] Derek N. H. Notman: great analogy, right?

[00:16:31] H. Adam Holt: Right. I need to, someone else needs to do the applications. I, it doesn't make sense for me to do the right. Once you get to that point, you're like, I actually don't know what the process for applications is anymore.

I don't know how to open a brokerage account

[00:16:41] Derek N. H. Notman: And I don't care.

[00:16:42] H. Adam Holt: And I, I shouldn't

[00:16:43] Derek N. H. Notman: Right. You know?

[00:16:44] H. Adam Holt: but that could be a huge problem in my operation that my, my junior is like pulling their hair out cuz they want to innovate that, but I'm not listening to them because you know what? I don't really care about that and you're, I'll just hire another person before I take my time to go solve that problem.

So now zoom that up to, 10,000 employees and you're like, that's nice. That's cute. I appreciate that. Listen, what's your name again? Okay, now go to the next person. And, and you know, so I, I got this actually, I was thinking about this the other day. I always think that like all CEOs were jerks because they didn't gimme the time of day when I was a nobody.

They must be all jerks. You have to become a jerk. Once you're a c e O, like you're not kind, you're never available. You just no return calls. It's, and I realize now what it is. You just have different priorities. And your priority is to stay focused when everyone wants to distract you. And that's why I think innovation is so slow in our business is because there's so much that has to, gets on.

The roadmaps are two years already baked. We know why we're doing it. I'm sorry. The industry changed during that two years. We're building that. We're gonna build the next legacy system you're gonna complain about. But we decided three years ago that we're gonna do this. We're almost done. The industry's changed, but they're like, I gotta

[00:18:01] Derek N. H. Notman: It's too late. Right. And, and the, it's been budgeted.

[00:18:04] H. Adam Holt: budgeted.

[00:18:05] Derek N. H. Notman: It's they, and that's where the money's going. , if you want to get on, , 2020 fives budget. Okay,

[00:18:10] H. Adam Holt: Yeah, that's right. You're done. And look, how many times have you brought innovation ideas to larger companies and they're like, okay, we're gonna build that. We're gonna use our internal team, we're gonna build it. Sure you are.

[00:18:22] Derek N. H. Notman: yeah. , and , they mean well, they truly do because they tend to have good teams and smart people and a pretty good budget.

[00:18:30] H. Adam Holt: That are already allocated by the

[00:18:31] Derek N. H. Notman: but they're already allocated, with with Coupler right now, some of the conversations we're having is they're asking us to do some things that.

Might take us a day, but it'll take us a month or two to get on the calendar of someone on their team to just spend an hour

[00:18:46] H. Adam Holt: totally,

[00:18:47] Derek N. H. Notman: Right. Because they're al they've already, they're already stretched way too thin.

[00:18:50] H. Adam Holt: Oh, and 10 people need to be on the call because it touches 10 people's units. Three people are on vacation, so now you gotta do a separate meeting with those three. And they don't understand what's going on. So , you don't, I'm, I mean, this is like my day. You're like explaining my day and

[00:19:04] Derek N. H. Notman: if you're a FinTech person or an advisor with a FinTech idea that's looking to work with partners, just here's some insight for you that it will not go as fast as you want it to. But, and maybe this is a good segue into the innovation aspects that some companies have is that some companies do have either like an innovation lab or, or division.

Or even just some , what I call entrepreneurial people who have been empowered that have more of a carte blanche pathway that they can just go, they can get stuff done and they can drive it. The challenge is that how do you find those people? Because as you said, they are also very busy,

[00:19:49] H. Adam Holt: Yep,

[00:19:49] Derek N. H. Notman: and if me, if they've got a hit list of 10 things they gotta get done in the next two years, how are you gonna get your thing to the top of that top 10 list?

[00:19:56] H. Adam Holt: If you are running a major company right now, And you think innovation. I'm saying a large company, not, not us small guys, SMBs, individual pr. If you're a really large company and you're not prioritizing an innovation team by putting someone a senior level svp, C level person in charge of innovation, you're missing the boat.

The challenges that we've seen from some of the larger companies as they create that role, but that person is still stuck in the ivory tower with the other leaders.

[00:20:24] Derek N. H. Notman: They're not empowered to actually make decisions and move.

[00:20:27] H. Adam Holt: and guess where the entrepreneurs are? They're not in the ivory tower, they're on the field. Right. They're the, they're the corporal who knows, Hey, boss, we don't have the right kind of ammunition.

Right. And, and that's not getting up to this, the tower. Okay? They're saying, look, make, do, we sent you ammunition? You got your man. Eat the MREs and just take what you got now, do your best. Right? You're like, my business is on the line, literally. And I think that's the key. , we have seen a couple of different, Teams that, or companies that have created innovation outlets within their organization, they do competitions like, Hey, submit your most aggravating innovation or problem thing that's broken to a team.

If we choose yours, we're gonna throw you five grand. , we'll actually implement it. We'll choose the top three. We'll do a community like, are these legitimate? I saw this happen once. It was really cool and they actually did something. Even it was just automating a form that all these advisors complained about.

They probably spent a hundred grand to figure out that it was the form, but that a hundred grand, basically they're gonna get it back tenfold

[00:21:32] Derek N. H. Notman: Probably in like a matter of

[00:21:34] H. Adam Holt: in hours.

[00:21:35] Derek N. H. Notman: looking at like thousands of people doing this thing and time saved and the business that can be written now and whatever, and.

[00:21:41] H. Adam Holt: So I, I have to tell you, Derek, when I heard this, I'll be honest with you, I told my firm, cuz we had a, a firm of a 25 people. I said, we're gonna create the same incentive. We offered, I forgot to tell you this. We, we offered all of our employees, we said, you probably know something that could be better at this firm, but we're not paying attention.

We're gonna collect them all. , the number one, one is gonna get fixed. We're gonna put a budget behind it of $10,000 to fix that problem. And we're gonna give you that project to run it. And if you could do it for less than $10,000, you get to keep the difference. So we created a project management thing for our, even our youngest guys that are just dealing with moving trades around or opening accounts.

If they came up with it and they could solve a major problem, we all agreed was a problem for $10,000 and they could fix it efficiently. They won and we won. Does that make sense?

[00:22:36] Derek N. H. Notman: Makes total sense. , you're motivating while also finding out what are the real pain points. And these large companies can do the same thing. I know a number of 'em have venture capital arms that are sometimes involved or actual innovation labs, startup labs.

[00:22:50] H. Adam Holt: totally.

[00:22:51] Derek N. H. Notman: But I think, you know, if you are a FinTech or an advisor with a FinTech idea, you still are in sales and you better have a really great idea that isn't half baked and you need to sell it because these folks are busy and they're getting pitched a whole bunch of times.

And if you really want this thing solved, don't go in half cocked. You really need , to get it in there and, and sometimes we may think it's good enough, but. The folks in the ivory tower or these labs, they have a different perspective. They have amazing deal flow. They get to be picky.

[00:23:26] H. Adam Holt: Mm-hmm. And they have capital , and usually brand that's attracting ideas all the time. Forget all the ones that their own teammates are finding cuz they have search parties out there looking for different innovations. , most of the large companies actually have , an innovation team that's actually looking for tech that they can adopt.

[00:23:41] Derek N. H. Notman: I've been contacted.

[00:23:42] H. Adam Holt: Yeah, me too. But, but that didn't happen in the beginning cuz nobody knew about

[00:23:46] Derek N. H. Notman: Exactly.

[00:23:47] H. Adam Holt: so nobody knew to contact us, which is one of the bigger challenges you and I both have always when you're doing any startup, is does anybody know you exist? That's the same thing. That's true for a financial advisor.

You might be the best financial advisor. You might be better than all of us. Process. Unbelievable. Nobody knows you about you anyway. That's great. The challenge is, is awareness and brand building for every single idea that's out there. Otherwise, it just, it unfortunately dies on the vine.

Un unappreciated. But that's the same thing with technology. So I think , the kind of closeout story for anyone who's in FinTech, you gotta get to a place where if you got a great idea, proof is in the pudding. You gotta show them with true k P I metrics. That means them being enterprise buyers, why specifically you will help them get what they want?

What's in it for me as an enterprise buyer? How are you gonna help my bottom line and my big agenda I'm getting a bonus on? And if you can help me do that, then I'm interested, but I'm gonna make you prove it with a POC or proof of concept or a pilot, right? And so you gotta be prepared to handle that and all the expectations that a procurement system of a large enterprise. Cybersecurity redundancy, . All those wonderful things that just your buyer has just got a much bigger appetite, uh, and higher expectation.

[00:25:00] Derek N. H. Notman: They certainly do and realize all of these things that you want to be able to pitch in the process, you have to go through with the enterprise will take time because of their old legacy systems, because of the different layers of management.

And who gets to say yes. Unless you get lucky and you do find that innovation person or lab or director, that can make a, a faster decision, but even the fast ones take months.

[00:25:25] H. Adam Holt: It's true.

[00:25:25] Derek N. H. Notman: So if you're, whether you're an a, a group of advisors wondering why tech is taking forever to get adopted or if you're a FinTech looking to do it, these things do take a ton of time.

[00:25:35] H. Adam Holt: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:37] Derek N. H. Notman: So, yeah, gotta find that happy medium. I think you said it right. If you can empower them to say, Hey, this is how it solves your problem, faster, cheaper, here's how you get your bonus faster, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're gonna be much more interested to push it and get the key decision makers in play.

And , there's one partner that we're working with, , for Coupler. We found an amazing internal champion and once we got them on board, they are the ones fighting. All day, every day to get all the other people aligned to make it happen. And they've even said, literally said to us, there's a lot of internal politics we gotta deal with.

[00:26:12] H. Adam Holt: There's no question. I mean, right now, if you're an advisor working in a larger infrastructure , or even a smaller one, you wanna make change. You gotta know. Who cares about why, why they need to make this change. It can't just be because it affects you or it's annoying to you. It, has to break through their top 10 priorities for it to get any attention because we all know we're living in a world of attention deficit.

, you can't focus on fixing everything. You can only focus on fixing maybe five things. And then the next five are backup for when I have time, which I never have it. So you gotta align your challenge with the most important priorities of the people making decisions, especially around capital.

And there are several incubators that we found out there that are interesting for. Looking at if you're a FinTech or if you're looking for innovation, especially around financial service. You wanna see what's coming next. You can go ahead chat. We made a list, actually, uh, we participated in some of these.

Six 30 does a FinTech incubator associated with Pershing and Edward Jones and a whole bunch of other companies. , we actually participated in that. You can kind see what companies are coming down the pike and , what solutions they're solving. , fidelity, mass Mutual, have a, have a mass challenge.

Also with Columbia Thread needle. F i s has an accelerator. Barclays Wells Fargo have accelerators now, , in the r a a space, , colony Group and Mariner have scratch works. I dunno if you saw that. It's like a, it's

[00:27:34] Derek N. H. Notman: cool. I'm not familiar with that one. That that's pretty

[00:27:36] H. Adam Holt: they do a Shark Tank kind of competition and they make it public and they put it up on YouTube and you can kinda see how people are pitching.

, it's kind of the FinTech Shark Tank . I think that's pretty cool. I just saw, Michael Nathanson recently, and , we were talking about this, but in the insurance side, it's been woefully lacking, I talked to Kelly Kidwell the Chair of Gamma a bunch of years ago. He said, we're gonna create something.

He had a great idea. I just don't know whether the insurance companies ever bought in building literally a safe sandbox where ideas like yours and mine would've been bubbled up. And tested in a safe environment with these companies to prove that they were really good ideas or there was some innovation that could make a difference.

, but because there was no outlet when you and I did this thing, we were just stuck figuring it out. Well, boy did we waste a lot of money and time, , and thank goodness we stuck with it, right? Because now we've both touched

[00:28:23] Derek N. H. Notman: That's

[00:28:24] H. Adam Holt: thousands, millions of people, which is crazy. So,

[00:28:26] Derek N. H. Notman: I know, right? , you gotta make truth, it's not, no. Like just what we were talked about, or taught when we started working as advisors, , every no is a step closer to it. Yes. . So it's that that's what it is. And you just gotta keep pushing there Is on that list, we'll add this one last one that we can jump to the our, , wrap stuff up here, but, Generator.

I don't know if you

[00:28:45] H. Adam Holt: Hmm. I don't know that one.

[00:28:46] Derek N. H. Notman: So they started in Madison, uh, when I was living there of all things. And they started as a general startup incubator, , give you some money, help you grow. And now they have one specifically for InsureTech, alliances is one of their partners.

Security benefits, a partner, but it's super competitive. I, they were just telling me they had a thousand applicants, I think. Don't quote me on that, but it was a lot. They only picked five.

[00:29:12] H. Adam Holt: Wow.

[00:29:14] Derek N. H. Notman: Right. So super competitive again to get in there, but, so it is happening, but probably not as fast , as we would like it to happen.

[00:29:22] H. Adam Holt: Yeah, there's no question about that. Um, I look, I think the, at the end of the day, it's not all bad, right? We, we hopefully have given some context as to why. It takes a long time for our industry to change, not only ours, there's other industries in this planet that, that are slow to innovate.

the bottom line is not all bad. There's a lot of innovation happening , in our world. You know, we have seen some real great success stories, at least on the FinTech side, for advisory, , nitrogen risk wise. Is, , has been a great, , story and we think holistic plan has been a great story from the adoption standpoint.

Both of those companies had very clear solutions that they were, and problems they were trying to solve, and I think that you saw viral adoption at the advisor level that really led to enterprise. Adoption. And I think, those two have been very interesting. Obviously Asset Map has had some, uh, accolade there with its kind of viral adoption.

Uh, and so I think there's some really interesting tools out there that are really putting pressure, not the least of which was bill Harris's Personal Capital, who actually may very well be on this podcast coming up soon. And Betterment, , who have really kind of pushed, I think , the standards companies like Altruist and what Jason Wink has built, as you know very well.

These are new age innovation custodians, , that I think are just changing the game.

[00:30:35] Derek N. H. Notman: What's also cool is that as the older guard, , or maybe you wanna call 'em the skeptics or the traditionalists, as they start to retire, there's gonna be a new breed of people filling those spots that are probably gonna be a little bit more forward thinking or open to change at a little bit, maybe faster pace. Uh, and that's cool because there's also this, network effect we have now. FinTech is getting more and more popular. There's more marketing around it. It's actually a really small circle of people that are talking to each other. And if the folks that you know, New York Life or Mass or Fidelity or whoever, they all know who each other are and they're talking to each other.

Hey, well what are they doing over there? Oh, well, we should go look at that now. So it is happening faster and faster, and we've just got some really cool companies that have already done it, so we know it's possible. Just a little bit faster, please,

[00:31:26] H. Adam Holt: so true.

[00:31:27] Derek N. H. Notman: just a little bit faster.

[00:31:28] H. Adam Holt: a little bit faster. So there you go. Happens all of a sudden. After a long period of time. Well, I wanted to end with, uh, with this question that came in. We, I thought this was kind of funny. It was very, , colloquial in the sense that Liz and Oregon, , reached out on our community question.

Derek and she, , wrote in Adam and Derek. How do you decide what topics the podcast's about? Aren't you worried about running out of topics? Everyone is saying the same things right now. Marketing, communications, the human delivery, ai. How will you keep it relevant? I'm just curious. Keep 'em coming. Thanks.

Liz in Oregon. So , what's your feedback on

[00:32:02] Derek N. H. Notman: I, I love the question. , I think there's a couple different, , one is that we are having more and more people come to us wanting to be on the podcast because they have a unique perspective on something they're doing, solving whatever, and then we get to debate it, which is a ton of fun. So we're looking for change makers and people that are forward thinking, and that's always gonna be there,

[00:32:23] H. Adam Holt: . Opinions, there'll be plenty of.

[00:32:25] Derek N. H. Notman: Put, yeah. Well at least let that Yeah, for sure. But I think what also is cool is, and, and you were instrumental in setting this up, is that we had a really cool experience at the Wealth Stack Conference in Miami, , just in May , of this year. , you wanna talk about what we were able to do , in one hour?

[00:32:42] H. Adam Holt: Yeah. Well, we asked nine thought leaders. What's the thing that advisors don't see coming? And nine people gave nine separate opinions. In fact, actually I think one person gave two separate opinions. So in a sense here you have people that are influencing thousands, if not tens of thousands of financial advisors in the community, and they're all saying a different thing.

That is really cool, and I think it aligns well with what we're doing, Derek, to rethink the profession. That means we need to be open to lots of different perspectives so we can decide, yes, I wanna rethink that, or I'm throwing that idea out. That's, that's not a good one. So the real key is intentionality about what we're doing.

As you've all figured that out in this mentorship podcast, we hope that, we're challenging you , to think or rethink what you're doing and come up with , a better, more effective outcome that hopefully serves your goal. So with that, Derek, I think we gotta wrap us up. Any closing thoughts?

[00:33:32] Derek N. H. Notman: Well, I would say just to tap it off with, innovation, as long as we have innovation, we have content for this podcast, if innovation dies and we're gonna have to start doing dad jokes,

[00:33:42] H. Adam Holt: And complaining.

[00:33:42] Derek N. H. Notman: And complaining. You know, that's about, that's about all we'll

[00:33:46] H. Adam Holt: might want to hear that, right? We could be like, Vander Pump finances. Just complain about everybody. That's what they

[00:33:53] Derek N. H. Notman: So I think we're good. So, good questions from Liz and thanks from Bob previously about just innovation and the frustrations there. Hopefully you've had some insight and, and, um, at least understand how it all works a little bit better. , it's not easy, but if it were easy, everyone would do it. So,

[00:34:09] H. Adam Holt: There you go. Great. Set. All right. With that in mind, you know what to do. Follow us on LinkedIn. Make sure you direct message us, let us know what's on your mind, and of course, stay in the community. Of course, like this, share this with a friend and we look forward to speaking with you on the next episode.

Derek from Philadelphia. I say goodbye.

[00:34:25] Derek N. H. Notman: . Thanks buddy. I appreciate it. Good seeing you. Thanks everybody.

The content has been made available to you by Asset-Map for informational and educational purposes only.